1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of information processing. More specifically this invention relates to the field of disseminating electronic information via a computer network.
2. Background Information
Networking advances have brought about significant improvements in the way information is communicated. As recently as the 1990s information was transmitted to users routinely via phone calls, scheduled news broadcasts or a postal service. This made the process of real time decision making difficult due to a lack of confidence in the currency of information. Indeed frequently, the only people with a reasonably complete picture on a situation were those people with dedicated, usually expensive, resources for the collection of real time data.
The modern commercial development of the global communications network referred to as the Internet has dramatically changed the availability of information. Today users can obtain news information by using a computer to access news sites via the Internet and specifically via the World Wide Web. This allows users to obtain information when the user wishes to obtain information vis-à-vis obtaining information at predetermined times. Notwithstanding this increase in information availability, several issues still remained. Specifically the ability of a user to obtain data in a timely matter and the ability to distinguish relevant information from the vast quantity of information available via the Internet and the World Wide Web are both significant challenges.
Various information sources offer an ability to push information to a user. A typical example of this is the provision of information via a stream of data. Specifically, real time stock pricing information is available whereby a user may obtain real time stock pricing for purposes of determining an action to be taken on a particular stock of interest. While this is plausible for the specific example of monitoring a specific data source for a specific security of interest, this method of operation for working with large volumes of information available from multiple data sources is untenable.
Consequently an efficient method of dealing with the vast quantities of information available via today's information networks is required.